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SEATTLE — A Michigan woman dying of leukemia hopes her embarrassing experience at a Seattle
airport changes the way the Transportation Security Administration treats travelers with medical
conditions.

Michelle Dunaj, 34, was making what she expects will be the last trip of her life on Oct. 2 as
she departed for Hawaii.

The Roseville, Mich., woman thought she had prepared by calling the airline ahead of time,
asking for a wheelchair, carrying documentation for her feeding tubes and making sure she had
prescriptions for all her medications, including five bags of saline solution. But Dunaj said she
received a full pat-down in the security line at Sea-Tac Airport and had to lift her shirt and pull
back bandages so agents could get a good look. She said everyone else in line got a look, too.

“My issue is: It was in front of everyone, and everyone was looking at me like I was a criminal
or like I was doing something wrong,” Dunaj said yesterday. “It shouldn’t have been in front of
everyone.”

Dunaj said a female agent performed the pat-down and asked her to lift up her shirt after
feeling the tubes going into Dunaj’s chest and abdomen.

“I asked them if they thought that was an appropriate location, and they told me that everything
was fine,” she said.

She said another agent punctured one of the saline bags she was carrying, ruining it.

TSA spokeswoman Lorie Dankers said Dunaj should have been granted a private search after she
asked for it. The agency is looking into the situation.

Dunaj will enter hospice on Oct. 17 back home.

She decided to make the trip after she was told she had three to four months to live. She doesn’t
regret it, despite the hassles.

“Hawaii was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen,” she said. “No. 1 on my bucket
list.”